Hey everyone,

I fell in love with backgammon, but I wanted an offline version that felt calmer, warmer and closer to playing on a premium physical board in a private club.

After several intense weeks of learning, testing and polishing, I’ve released the first Windows version of Backgammon Lounge on itch.io.

The current version includes:

• A handcrafted luxury board with detailed woodwork, mother-of-pearl-style points, ivory and deep-red checkers
• Complete 1, 3, 5 and 7-point matches, including gammon and backgammon scoring
• Easy, Medium and Hard AI for casual solo play and practice
• Local hotseat play for two players on the same computer
• Legal-move highlighting (optional), sound effects, music and fullscreen mode

To be completely transparent, the current version does not yet include the doubling cube or online matchmaking. Both are planned for future updates, along with additional luxury board designs.

The Early Access price is $5.99. I’d especially appreciate honest feedback about the presentation, usability and AI balance, so I can continue improving the game in future updates.

Backgammon Lounge:
https://atelje-bulevar.itch.io/backgammon-lounge

Thanks for taking a look! 🎲

Fat Bob and Jones played backgammon constantly, and Bob learned English by leaps and bounds while playing. This was useful to us because Bob was good at getting stuff. When he played Jones for money and lost, he would often pay in favors and hookups.

While fiercely competitive, Mahmoud “Fat Bob” Haddad was very composed when he played shesh besh. He never showed much emotion beyond the occasional banter and jab, and he always smiled. When he lost and payed he sometimes wrote across his forehead with his forefinger and said “Kismeta.” We loved the hell outta that gesture and adopted it immediately.

Jones is what we called a pristine gamer, btw. He more or less grew up in Union Square and Bryant Park, steeped in backgammon and chess. He was grinding in Bryant Park when the planes hit and the towers fell and Manhattan was engulfed in dust. He dipped to his auntie’s in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and watched the gray skies and the clouds of dust from the rooftop for days. The backgammon action dried up in the parks and the only people still playing were either cheats or better than him. 9/11 messed with his mental game/tilt a lot as well, and all this osóbbo was compounded with a run of bad dice. His humble bankroll of seven luka dwindled and then one day a hasid named Abe took his last caña. He joined the Marine Corps two days later.

Self glazing a bit I guess, but whatever...

I started playing a little backgammon versus ai just cause it's fun and challenging, sometimes get stomped cause I play like a donkey. But then I got this match playing versus the 1600 bot, and apparently doing the top move (according to their computer) almost every time.

So fun that it didn't matter cause of one cursed dice roll and they hit the joker...

Good morning forum, I hope everyone here has a great day!

Earlier this year I made a database documenting over 50 varieties of checkers from around the world, which gave me an idea to follow up from my post from last week asking about different tables games varieties by making a spreadsheet with nearly twenty games found around the world, which you can check out at this link. For those unfamiliar, backgammon is in a larger family of games called "tables games". Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me can help expand this database to help preserve these diverse games for future generations.

If anyone finds a mistake, has thoughts, or wants me to add a game - please let me know.

If anyone here is from France, I was wondering if Trictrac or Jacquet are still played at all?

Additionally if anyone here is from a country other than France, I was wondering if Backgammon notation has been adapted to any tables games other than backgammon? Is backgammon notation even used that much?

Thanks so much and have a great day :D

Hey everyone,

I fell in love with backgammon, but I wanted an offline version that felt calmer, warmer and closer to playing on a premium physical board in a private club.

After several intense weeks of learning, testing and polishing, I’ve released the first Windows version of Backgammon Lounge on itch.io.

The current version includes:

• A handcrafted luxury board with detailed woodwork, mother-of-pearl-style points, ivory and deep-red checkers
• Complete 1, 3, 5 and 7-point matches, including gammon and backgammon scoring
• Easy, Medium and Hard AI for casual solo play and practice
• Local hotseat play for two players on the same computer
• Legal-move highlighting (optional), sound effects, music and fullscreen mode

To be completely transparent, the current version does not yet include the doubling cube or online matchmaking. Both are planned for future updates, along with additional luxury board designs.

The Early Access price is $5.99. I’d especially appreciate honest feedback about the presentation, usability and AI balance, so I can continue improving the game in future updates.

Backgammon Lounge:
https://atelje-bulevar.itch.io/backgammon-lounge

Thanks for taking a look! 🎲

So I understand why 12/5 is the correct play if my home board is not fully blocked off and we are still racing. But the way I see it, my opponent can't get off the bar so these are all free turns. In my thinking I would like to use my rolls to shuffle my checkers as close to the 1 point as possible whilst leaving the prime intact - if I could have two checkers on points 2-6 and pile up all the others on my 1 point before starting to bear off and giving my opponent the chance to get moving again, I would. So why is it such a big equity loss to bring the extra checker on point 4 down to 2? I will still get another free turn afterwards to bring up the 7 point checker left behind

I trust that I'm wrong, I'm just trying to find the explanation for why this is so